Sermon for Gift day at St Edward’s, 12 Oct 2025.
Readings: Matthew 16:13-20, Ezekiel 47:1-12
As most of you know, a few years ago this church had sadly shrunk to a handful of faithful people. In its past it had thrived, indeed a church was first planted here because St John’s in town was overflowing ,as the town grew. In time St Edward’s had a flourishing church family, with excellent community links, a thriving community café and toddler group, not so different to today. It was a parish church in every sense of the words.
Like many churches, changes, people growing older, less people in the wider world wanting to come to church, and more, meant that the congregation dwindled. The faithful core remained committed however, and saw the church through 4 years without a vicar and through the tough covid years.
There were conversations about the future of this church at higher levels, but the Bishop stuck her neck out and fought for this church to retain a full-time priest, ready for an increase in housing in this parish. We were given a mandate to revitalise the church, to turn it around and that’s what we’ve been seeking to do together over the last 3 1/2 years.
We’ve had some ups and downs in that time, times of plateau, times of celebration and times of great sorrow too. But overall we are on the up. Our congregation has grown, we have grown new and re-established old, relationships in the parish, we have increased our giving to the parish share and we are well on the way to revitalisation, following a vision we all prayed into.
But being and growing a church is not easy! We need only look to the Bible to see how the church was grown and how the people of God behaved in the past.
In Genesis 28 for example, we read God giving a dream to Jacob, later known as Israel, a promise to grow his family as a people and to be with them. God says:
Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you… Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ And he was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
Gen 28:15-17
The House of God with the people. And yet we know Jacob’s life did not run smooth, having tricked his brother, he was later cheated by his father in law, he had 2 wives, and several concubines, his sons fought, and he himself wrestled with God.
But his descendants were the foundation of the Jewish people, Israel.
In Exodus we read God’s vision, to Moses of the tabernacle, a place where God would travel with the people. And Moses saw in great detail how this was to be made. This through a man who was a murderer.
In 2 Samuel we see David with a vision of a more permanent temple, a home for God. And we know David loved God and God saw his heart. Despite his wrong doing at times.
Ezekiel the prophet saw a vision (in Ez 40) of the temple enlarged, measured out in great detail, and patterns of worship laid out, who should minister, and the offerings to be given.
And then in ch 47 as we heard, Ezekiel is shown water flowing from the temple, getting deeper and deeper the further it flows, bringing rivers and life, teeming with fish, trees for food growing abundantly. A picture of the land of the people, a place of worship, and the provision of God for them.
In the NT we see Peter as the foundation of the church (in Matt 16:13-20) as we heard.
In Ephesians 2 We see Paul telling people they are all members of God’s household, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets before them, this is the church that has grown from the people of Israel, the family of Jacob and before him Abraham, joined with followers of Christ, past, present, and future into the church with Christ as the cornerstone.
In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord;in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.
Eph 2:21-22
This church which is referred to as the Bride of Christ in Rev 19.
Our church today, here at St Edward’s is part of that same journey, that legacy, of building the church, a place of worship, of community and family, and of the presence of God – now carried within us.
You know St Edward too knew about building up the church as he was instrumental in the building of the original Westminster Abbey, in the 2nd century, as a royal burial church. And it was consecrated in 1065 but not completed until after his death.
Sadly it was later demolished in 1245 to make way for Henry III’s new building which still stands today. But Edward new what it meant to be part of continuing to grow and build the church of God.
So, the legacy of church is one of God’s vision, God’s building through the people, through family, through the work of the Spirit, and we continue that today. We here, have a vision to do so which came as a result of us praying together a few years ago.
Last week I talked about the place of the church in the wider world as vital, more than ever. That the place of us as the local church is equally vital. And that our place within it, each of us, is also fundamental.
The church is all about the people, always has been, always will be. We are the ones who reveal Jesus in this world and who build up the church. We continue to follow God’s vision for the church, here on a local level. King Edward, was known for his witness and faith – that is why he was called the confessor, because he confessed Christ, proclaiming allegiance to God’s kingdom, for a greater king than him. He showed through his life and his actions a different way of ruling, a different way of being a king. Not focussed on the things that others prioritise like wealth and power, but on goodness, faithfulness, trust, peace and so on.
Likewise we need to show a kingdom way of living to the world, and to our community, and that is what we seek to do, in all we do.
Now as I said last week I don’t like doing the hard sell on giving, our treasures would like me to talk about giving more! I know many of you are so generous with your finances and with your time. However, it is gift day and we really do need all of us to contribute.
As I said last week, it would be amazing if we just got an allotted share of money from the CofE each month to do what we need to do, but it doesn’t work like that sadly. We have to raise all we need to do the work of Christ here in our parish.
We have done so well over the last few years financially, we’ve increased donations hugely, we’ve received grant funding, had some generous one off gifts and with those we have managed to pull off some big projects like the community garden, we’ve employed a cafe manager and a children’s worker, put in new sound and AV system, new chairs, we’ve increased our parish share contribution dramatically, and paid our bills. But we still need to increase what we bring in, in order to keep doing what we are doing, to run our toddler sessions, to pay Paula, to run the cafe, to run community events, even to pay me and to keep a FT priest here, and to and pay our day to day bills. We are doing all we can to raise money, applying for grants, trying to build up bookings, increasing café income but we still need to aim higher.
This year our gift day focus points are towards the children’s worker salary which is a vital role in our vision, and our funding for this role comes to an end this year. We will be looking to find further grant funding but salaries are notoriously difficult to fund through grants.
And we know that our heating system will need replacing in the next few years, and is likely to cost in the region of £50k to replace, so we need to start raising money for that now.
As well we need to continue to increase our parish share contributions.
So this year 25% of all donations will go towards the parish share, as in the last few years, and the rest will be split 50/50 between the children’s worker salary and the heating fund.
Now these may not seem quite as exciting as in previous years but they are absolutely vital to all we do. Let me give you some headlines for our children’s work for the next year. We have set some targets to work on.
I cannot underestimate the work Paula has done in drawing families into our church. RTs, our summer craft events and so on, are extremely successful and we know from the comments people make, how appreciated these things are by our wider community. We also know garden church is growing naturally.
So we’ve been thinking more about how we help people who come to things like these take a step into church, and the idea of a different type of service not on a Sunday morning that might be easily accessible. So, 3 times a year we are going to host something that is a sort of mix between our craft events and a service, Christmas, Easter and another time, probably Harvest, where we can share a key Christian message in a way that is, as I say easily accessible. And from these and with feedback from those who come we hope to grow something in between these 3 as well. We’re really excited about these and the first will be this Christmas.
Schools work has been growing too, with both local schools asking us for more input. Neither of these are church schools and the fact they are keen to work with us more, is really something to celebrate. In the coming year we will be hosting a Christingle service for each school, separate to our usual Christmas services, and next year an Ash Wednesday service for each, as well as more assemblies. As you know we are also hosting our first prayer space next week for Southway, and Gattons would like us to host one for them too.
So lots going on and lots to celebrate.
Now the heating system might sound a little less exciting but I am sure in the deaths of winter we might be more pumped about it! Actually we are putting ourselves ahead of the game, many churches find themselves in the situation where the boiler packs up one day and all of a sudden they have to find thousands of pounds. We want to get ourselves to the position where we start to build up a fund now. We know form our energy audit earlier in the year, that our boilers are estimated to have 3-5 years life left. Might be a bit more might be a bit less but we are planning accordingly, and it make take us a while to raise the money.
All churches in the CofE now have to replace boilers with sustainable ones and we have already been advised our only option is an air source heat pump. This will also really help our carbon footprint and our aim to be more sustainable in all we do. Not to mention as a new system being far more economical and efficient! At the moment we have to charge huge amounts if anyone wants to hire the building in the winter to cover the heating costs, so in the long run it will help us to get more bookings too.
And finally parish share – we might feel why do we have to pay this to the diocese,? but we are all the diocese and each church pays a part so that work together for the kingdom of God here in Sussex. That covers things like clergy costs and housing as well as training for ordinands and others. We actually do pretty well out of this, obviously we are not just paying full whack and yet I am full time, we have an ordinand in training in Gill, a reader, and we have had 3 people train as ALMs in the last few years.
I’d love us to imagine ourselves like the temple in Ezekiel’s vision. The man (probably as understood today as Jesus), shows Ezekiel water flowing from the temple. The water flows right from the heart of the temple and out into the world around. The further it goes the deeper it gets until it becomes a river deep enough to swim in and along its banks of the river trees grow and life flourishes. The river flows into all the land, and when it enters the sea, the sea of stagnant waters, the water becomes fresh and life thrives. The river carries life to bring life from death. The sea will be a place for fishing. The imagery I am sure is not lost on us, from this place of worship, the temple, where God resides, life will flow and come out in abundance. We read of the trees on the river bank that
Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.’
Life that comes from this river flowing from God’s presence brings healing too.
This whole vision shows us all that God gives, life, flourishing, healing, growth, the water of life… I wonder if we can see our church here like this. That from St Edward’s flows life from the presence of God, increasing as it goes. Can we picture people, ourselves coming here, being filled with the presence of God and taking that out into the world? People coming here encountering God and going away full of life? Essentially that is what we are seeking to do as we grow, for ourselves to be filled up with God, and for that to go into the wider community. let us be a river of life to the parish around us and let us all be a part of that in our own presence, in our time and in our financial giving
Amen
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